Heretofore, a transfer apparatus having a rope guided by a guide member includes, for example, a lift device, car gondola device, ropeway, and cable car (hereinafter referred to as the lift device) which consist of pulleys and wire ropes, and what is generally known is a ski lift which is disposed at skiing grounds. In such a ski lift, because of its structure, carriers suspended from the wire rope have a drawback of being easily influence by a side wind with resect to the moving direction of the carriers. In addition, since the ski lift is disposed among the mountains where a gust of wind blows, there is a danger that the wire rope easily comes off the pulley because of the sway of the carriers from side to side due to a side wind. For a safety precaution, an off-position detector is disposed on each left device to detect the off-position of the wire rope from a pulley on one hand, and a monitor camera is used to monitor the sideward sway of the carriers on the other hand.
The above off-position detector detects the off-position of the wire rope from a pulley when the wire rope displaced from the pulley presses a switch such as a limit switch which is disposed on the side of the pulley. And, to monitor the sideward sway of carriers with the monitor camera, monitor cameras are disposed at a plurality of places along the stretched direction of the wire rope, and a man keeps observing the sideward sway of carriers due to wind on monitors from the cameras.
In the lift device, the pulley is generally fixed and the wire rope is designed to travel, but there is a lift device where the wire rope is conversely fixed and the pulley travels, and there is a danger in the same way as above that the pulley is easily displaced from the wire rope because of a sideward swat of the carrier due to a side wind. Now, description will be made with reference to an example where the wire rope travels.
Incidentally, the aforementioned conventional off-position detector is aimed at preventing a secondary hazard which may be caused by operating the lift with the wire roped displaced from a pulley, and has a problem that it cannot prevent the off-position of the wire rope from the pulley. And, monitoring of the sideward sway of carriers through the monitor cameras can hardly prevent the wire rope from coming off of the pulley groove due to a gust of wind. Further, the recent ski lift is operated at a high speed and the number of lifts carrying a plurality of passengers are increasing, and a gondola and ropeway are enlarging in size, and accordingly the possibility of off-position of the wire rope from the pulley is increasing, leading to the increase of injured people due to accidents every year. In addition, to monitor the sideward sway of carriers through the conventional monitor cameras, it is not efficient because a man has to keep watching, and there is a defect that a standard for judging the presence or not of danger as to the degree of sideward sway of carriers is vague. Furthermore, to dispose the above plurality of monitor cameras to many existing lift facilities, construction work is made on a large scale, and so there is a disadvantage that the cost of construction becomes high.
In view of the above, this invention aims to provide a displacement detector of a metallic rope against a guide member which detects a displacement degree of a wire rope from a guide member, so that the off-position of the rope from the pulley can be prevented automatically efficiently, and which can be easily installed to existing lift facilities; and also aims to provide a drive control device of the transfer member which detects a displacement degree of a rope from a standard position in a pulley groove at a plurality of points, controls and operating speed of the transfer member according to each displacement degree to prevent the off-position of the rope from the pulley groove automatically and efficiently, improves the safety and carrying capacity of the lift substantially, and can be easily disposed on existing lift facilities.